Fancy appearing on the Corrie cobbles in a walk-on part? Well, thanks to Craig Charles, who plays cabbie Lloyd Mullaney, you can bid to win a walk-on part. It's up for auction at the Help for Heroes ball on April 18th, organised by the Southern Yacht Club.
See the special effects used to create all that smoke and fire in the bookies on Coronation Street. There's a behind-the-scenes video at the official Corrie site here.
Greetings and welcome to another weekly wotsit of wonder. This week the update comes whizzing through the airwaves at the speed of light wearing stripy pink socks. And so without any further ado, here we go with this week’s Coronation Street update.
In the flat above the bookies, Peter drinks and falls, bumping his head and applying a plaster to the cut.
confusing telephone call. But Deirdre’s ploy is not enough to shock Peter out of downing the booze and he falls asleep drunk with a cigarette in his hand while cheesy hits from the 70s and 80s plays on CD and provides the soundtrack to a fire in the bookies.
Peter’s cigarette burns a hole in the rug to The Only Ones’ Another Girl, Another Planet. The flames reach higher and higher to Brass in Pocket by The Pretenders and by the time Luke Strong and Tony Gordon break the door down and rescue Simon and Peter, it’s Vienna’s Ultravox. But the best bit, oh, the best bit by far was Luke Strong going back into the burning flat to 
rescue Leanne the rabbit. Sinnita’s So Macho should have been playing, but it wasn’t, perhaps because the CD player had melted in the heat. “You had to go back for the rabbit?” Tony asks Luke later at th’ospital. And when Luke Strong replies: “I always go back for the rabbit,” you know you can take him at his word.
And where’s Ken when all this is going on? He’s on the love boat with Martha. She’s very comely, is Martha, very welcoming in a mature lady sort of a way and you can see why Ken’s tempted. I wouldn’t mind popping round there myself for a spot of freshly made coffee, some mothering and a bit of her worldly advice. But when Ken returns to find Peter and Simon in th’ospital and the bookies up in flames, he has a lot to think on. Will it be Martha or marriage? Deirdre or chips?
It’s getting creepy between Tony and Maria when he gives her the glad-eye with his good eye. But while Tony and Maria grow close and confidential, Natasha’s the one that Tony’s taking to bed. She’s fair and easy game, throwing caution to the wind and her knickers in the air as she knocks the dust off Tony’s duvet. Maria, as you can tell, is not best pleased and more than a tad jealous. “You’ve been out all night in them clothes, again?” she tuts at Natasha. “No,” Tash replies, “I washed me tights out but my gusset’s still a bit damp.”
At Tara’s art gallery, Dev says ta-ra to a load of his dosh as he gets Minnie to pretend she’s an art buyer who spends £700 on Tara’s art prints. Dev has to spend the cash just to make Tara feel that the art gallery’s worthwhile and making a profit. When Tara finds out what Dev’s gone and done she packs up and leaves him but Dev’s not lost for long. He waves ta-ra to Tara and finds his accountant lady friend Lisa in the Rovers. After a swift drink he whisks her back to the flat to show her his etchings he’s just bought from Tara.
Kirk’s a bit upset this week. Well, Julie thought she was pregnant and then she found out she wasn’t so Kirk had his hopes raised and then dashed in the same episode. “I feel like my life’s changing every five minutes,” he moans in the Rovers. Poor Kirkeh. Poor Julie. Poor Babeh.
And finally, Sally hosts the dinner party from hell although she did wear a nice frock. She wanted to get Molly and Tyrone over for their tea so she could grill both on their intentions about their share in Kev’s garage. Molly wanted to get more involved in doing the books but Sally shook her head patronisingly and told Molly she looked after that sort of thing and there was nothing for Molly to worry about, or do. Sally is wonderful when she’s in full Hyacinth Bouquet flow. She even took something out of the freezer for tea. I never knew you could freeze tins of beans.
And that’s just about that for this week.
Coronation Street writers this week were John Kerr, Peter Whalley, Damon Rochefort, Julie Jones and Joe “I saved Leanne the rabbit” Turner.
Glenda
--
Blogging away merrily at http://flamingnora.blogspot.com/
When it's the Sally Webster Inn, a hotel in America. You can even book to stay in Sally's own room.
Watch Katherine Kelly, Coronation Street's barmcake Becky Granger, on ITV's Justin Collins show this week.
With thanks to fellow bloggers at the Big Lorry Blog for this smashing old picture of a lorry named Newton and Ridley. The driver must have been a Coronation Street fan and if you're a fan of lorries you can find out all about it here. Go on, you know you want to.
The lovely people at Welcome Cottages have sent me a postcard from, er, Ozzy the Coronation Street black labrador. It's all a ploy to advertise their dog-friendly holiday homes and you can catch up with Ozzy's adventures online with a little video. It's all quite sweet!
... the writing.
Crikey, well, this has been a long time coming but The Daily Star have got the story first.
There's a great article in The Yorkshire Evening Post to which I found myself nodding my head in agreement with almost every word. It lays out some of the things the writer finds wrong with Corrie at the minute and I now propose some ways to take that further.
There's a good spoiler in The Sun who say that barmcake Becky Granger gets caught with a stash of Class A's when the Rovers Return gets raided in a drugs bust. Fortunately for fans of Coronation Street's barmaid Becky, she's going to be innocent. The drugs are planted on her by ex-boyfriend Slug who is blackmailed by bent copper DC Hooch.
Kym Marsh-Ryder-Marsh, who plays Coronation Street's Michelle Connor, has been divorced from husband Jack.
With thanks to Corrie fan Martin S. for sending in this wonderful gurn of Steve McDonald at his non-wedding to Becky Granger.
Antony Cotton has signed a new contract keeping him in Coronation Street as Sean Tully until July next year, says The Sun.
Samia Smith who plays Corrie crimper Maria Connor, has been wearing bracelets made by pupils from Loreto Grammar School, Altrincham, during filming. The pupils have called their venture Eye Candy because the bangles are made of sweets, and are marketing their product as seen on TV to boost sales. And now they can say, as seen on the Coronation Street blog!
With thanks to Corrie fan Deborah for alerting the blog to this one.
It's not been a good year for Coronation Street so far as awards ceremonies go. And with the nominations released this week for the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) I was shocked to see that Corrie wasn't even nominated. No, not for anything. The four shows nominated under Best Continuing Drama were EastEnders, Emmerdale, The Bill and Casualty.
News just in from a nice man at the New Wolsey Theatre in Ipswich is that Jenny Platt, who played Coronation Street's Violet Wilson, is starring in a new a comedy called Chimps. It runs from 30 April to 16 May and Jenny Platt plays Stevie, the female lead.
Kiwi Coronation Street fans can now catch up with Coronation Street online at the TV New Zealand website. Full episodes of Coronation Street are now available the morning after they screen on TV ONE, with each episode available for a week after their broadcast slot (Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays at 7.30pm on TV ONE).
Corrie fans will soon be able to sup a pint of Coronation stret beer. It's true, and all the details are all on Ian Wylie's blog at the Manchester Evening News.
The 1Xtra Breakfast Show with Trevor Nelson & Gemma dropped by the set of Coronation Street last week and interviewed Craig Charles, Antony Cotton, Jennie McAlpine and Ryan Thomas. They even got to act out a bit of real script which will appear on Corrie in six weeks time! With thanks to Julie at the BBC for sending this in to the blog.
Bargain shop Poundland continue to crack the credit crunch by opening two new shops this Saturday, 28th March.
Spring greetings and warm welcomes to this week’s update. The sun’s shining, the birds are singing and I’m having a good hair day. What more do we need? And so without any further ado, let's crack on with this week’s Coronation Street update.
Who are the Women of Wilmslow? It’s a tough question but one that needs to be asked because they’re getting their knickers in a twist. There’s a big order going out for the Women of Wilmslow and the man who comes to inspect the seams at Underworld isn’t best pleased. He sulks about the stitching and growls about the gussets. Tony tries to placate him and as the argy-bargy acts out on the factory floor things take a turn for the worse when Luke Strong announces that he’s the new factory boss. He’s only gone and bought Carla’s factory share and when Tony takes this up with Carla’s solicitor, she confirms that Carla did indeed want to sell and as quickly as she could. It’s too much for Tony and he drinks himself into a stupor before a sexy text message from Natasha sends him over the edge and into a panic attack in the flat. Hey, it happens. 
Meanwhile, the new factory boss buys the girls and Sean drinks in the pub and he tells them things won’t be any different, it’ll still be: “Routine, Familiarity…”, “… and chips?” asks the girls. Where would we all be without chips?
Luke rubs Tony up the wrong way when he gets his feet firmly under the Underworld office desk. So much so that Tony hires a private eye (am I dating myself by wanting to write ‘Inch High’ before those two words?) to dig dirt on Mister Strong. Tony consoles himself with a quick sub-duvet roll with Natasha the hairdresser. He woos her with his best Scots accent in a Sean Connery kind of way. Even the ITV continuity woman was wowed but I think Tony’s gruesome. 
Possibly Natasha felt that Tony gruesome more. But anyway, back to those Women of Wilmslow. If the order’s accepted maybe they’ll branch out and start sewing up pants for the Chaps of Chorlton or even the Slappers of Salford. Who knows?
Steve and Becky might not have got wed but they’re off on honeymoon to the Maldives this week. Now then, I work with someone who’s going to the Maldives and she has to have all kinds of jabs for this, that and t’other nasty disease. Steve and Becky had none. But I digress. Before they went off to the airport driven by Hayley in the Woody (which sounds like a dark Grimms fairytale) there was a wonderful food fight in a Chinese restaurant. Steve wanted to take Becky there for a quiet chat but as luck would have it they ended up sitting next to Lloyd and leg-over Liz who were lusting at each other with a bit of soft-shell crab. Becky and Liz started trading insults: “You dress like Barbie’s grandmother!” says Becky to Liz. That was a good one that, and Liz replied: “At least I don’t look like Dracula’s daughter!” The fight escalated and soft-shell 
crab was flung into Liz’s cleavage which, believe you me, was not a pretty sight. And as if that wasn’t a bad enough week for Liz, Lloyd leaves her for two weeks and heads to party-central in Ibiza but he promised Liz faithfully that he wasn’t packing his pulling shirt or his lucky pants.
But back to the Rovers where Poppy had a wonderful comic scene this week in which she snapped on yellow rubber gloves for no reason at all, except that it was really very funny indeed.
when he found out that Gail had moved Joe back into the house. Audrey’s also dismayed to see Joe back in Gail’s life and came out with some sage words of advice, which is unusual for Audrey. “Forgive one set of lies,” she told her daughter, “and you’re inviting another.”
Speaking of Audrey, she’s not in Bill’s good books when she asks him to start repaying the seven and a half thousand pound loan that she gave him to set himself up in the builder’s yard. He clearly can’t afford to pay Audrey back but neither can he afford to get in her bad books. He mulls it over with Jason and a pint in the pub. “I’ll have to go now,” he tells Jase. “Sally’s cooking ravioli.” What? Sally can open a tin that’s not beans these days?
Tara’s art gallery opens for business and she’s in a right panic, it’s all she can think about, not even bothering to say congratulations to Amber who’s secured a place studying law at King’s College in that London. Tara’s running rings around Dev but he doesn’t seem to either notice or care, not now comedy uncle Umed is around. I can’t see the point to comedy uncle Umed; he’s sleazy and a bit rancid and actually, not that comedic at all. Anyway, at the art gallery opening, Darryl and Amber are in serving uniforms, the artist’s in a Che Guevara t-shirt, Dev’s in a cravat and Tara’s in debt right up to her neck.
Finally this week, Peter’s either back on the booze or whisky-soaked cornflakes are a Heston Blumenthal special that somehow passed me by. Deirdre tuts and looks rightly worried about little Simon while moaning to Eileen about Peter and Ken. “He read me a poem this morning,” Deirdre tells Eileen about her errant husband, “It was about scaffolding. I was trying to get a piccalilli stain out of the carpet at the time.” And that kind of dialogue, my friends, is why I love Coronation Street so much.
Philip McGinley, who plays the Connor cousin Tom Kerrigan, has left Coronation Street.
The new Google Street View shows the Manchester based offices of ITV, where Coronation Street is filmed. I don't know if the Google cameras went up and down the cobbles but at least you can have a look around the area of Granada Television. It's here.
Following in a curmudgeonly line of Coronation Street codgers, news reaches the blog that butcher Graeme Proctor is set to become the new Fred Elliot. And that's not a Good Thing, because it sends him on the slippery slope of becoming Coronation Street's next old codger. Remember Uncle Albert Tatlock and Percy Sugden? Norris Cole currently wears the old codger crown but it could be going to Graeme sooner than he and his fans might like.
